Two million - that sounds like lot of bricks. It said to be the number of Deptford made bricks supplied to Henry VIII for his manor house at Dartford - which being done up as a home for discarded wife, Ann of Cleves. Two million is the number given in Christopher Philpotts‘‘desktop history’ of Deptford Creek – but,, to be honest, I very much doubt that the brick works concerned was on Deptford Creek itself. The histories of brick making I’ve looked at say that in the16th Century bricks were newly fashionable, but expensive and only used for posh buildings. They also say that they were usually made on the building site itself by itinerant Flemish immigrant craftsmen.
Regardless of where they were actually made and who made them – they were clearly sourced from a Deptford business and this is a pointer to the sort or industry in Deptford before – say - 1600.
I thought that this week I should try to give a bit of background to the various industries on Deptford Creek. I’ve listed a lot of Creekside industries over the past year and have only the last few yards to do – the area between Deptford Creek Road Bridge and the Thames. But also I think that something else I needed to do was to look and see what industry there was before the Palace came to Greenwich and before the Royal Dockyard opened in the early 16th Century.
I have wondered if Deptford may have been the first area heavily industrialised in England. I wrote back in February about the enormous population in Greenwich and Deptford in 1662 – and how the Tudor Palace must have provided thousands of jobs over the previous century. By the 1660s Royal Dockyard was flourishing and many other businesses, like the copperas works, were in operation. This means that there must have been people around with a lot of skills who cud do the various jobs available in these new industries. We know that there were skilled immigrants – like the Flemish brick makers – and Deptford historian ,Jess Steele, says, in her great book on Deptford ‘Turning the Tide’ , that in the 1590s for ‘every one person who died in Deptford there were 10 others who had come to the river front to get work or to join their families’. But we also need to know if there were skilled workers in the existing Deptford community
One problem is that I don’t have much source material for this and I am very reliant for information on Deptford Creek before the 17th Century on Christopher Philpot’s unpublished study which was commissioned by the Creekside Project in 1997. This is a terrific piece of work – and I’m very lucky to have a copy - and that was given to me many years ago through the kindness of one of the developers, would you believe! I don’t know where it is available and it really should be better known.
Christopher Philpotts was an archaeologist and he had access to the work of other archaeologists. There have been many, many archaeological investigations along Deptford Creek – there can be few other places which have had so many – and they are one of my key sources. Their work has usually been commissioned by developers as a condition of their planning consent. But it is sometimes really hard to get to see their written reports.
I’m saying this because I am really stuck for a copy of a report on what is probably the most important of these - the huge investigation on the East India Company site – and if anyone has a copy? – Well, I would be very grateful for a sight of it. It’s not the only reference material I am trying to source either.
Enough of all this - I began by saying that this week I was going to write about what was going on in Deptford before the Palace and the Royal Dockyard. So – was this a quiet little rural riverside peasant community? Have we any idea what was going on?
First of all there was work to modify the local environment and make it more usable. Archaeologists have done quite a bit of the work up and down the creek looking at the banks – ‘the walls’ - and at embankments throughout the area, which were built to keep the river in some sort of check and made it easier to use. There is a lot about the riverside ‘walls’ in ‘Deptford Creek. The Creekside Project’s book 'Surviving Regeneration' has some great photographs and explanations about the Creek walls -and some of the embankments. A lot of this work is very difficult to date but it seems they may be Saxon, or even earlier, but that work has continued and is, obviously, continuing, to keep them safe and functioning. They aren’t things you can just leave!
In order to build and maintain ‘the walls’ you need to know what you are doing. You can’t build a mound of earth and hope I will keep the river in its place and still be there when you come back. So who knew how do this work?
Most of the work on the ‘walls’ will have been done the land owners - in many cases religious houses which had a reputation for land improvement over the centuries. A lot of dry land in areas like Thanet is only there because of years and years of reclaimation work on marshland by the local monks. So I guess the work was commissioned by local landowners like Bermondsey Abbey –just up the road. Another local landowner with the expertise for this sort of civil engineering was Bridge House – the very wealthy 12th century body which still maintains London Bridge. But, of course, they would have used local labour to do all the hard work – and passed on knowledge as they did so.
Christopher Philpotts talks about gravel pits in Deptford in the 16th century – they were on the east bank of the Creek and also on the west bank where there was an area called ‘Gravell Pitt Meade’. Another area called ‘the Gravel pits’ was common pasture in 1608 and later became known as the ‘Gravel Pits Estate’ and it was drained by ‘Gravel Pit Sluice’. So, what was this interest in gravel about?
Some gravel might have been used on roads – although roads were usually just muddy tracks it is possible that the very busy Dover Road across Deptford Bridge and up Shooters Hill might have needed some sort of surface. Probably the main a lot of the gravel was used as ballast in ships – this means that ships which had come to Deptford and unloaded would then load up with the gravel to stabilize them on a return journey without cargo. Christopher Philpotts quotes a report from 1515 of the river wall being broken ~” by balysse in a horse and cart”.
Growing ‘Osiers’ is another activity which is said to have gone on in Deptford in the Middle Ages. This is the growing of small-scale willow plants which would be cut back and kept as bushes. The twigs could be used for a number of things but it is usually said that they were used to make baskets. Baskets are very useful things but you don’t need that many! A lot of willow twigs would be needed in buildings made of ‘wattle and daub’ which was the main way of doing the construction of ordinary homes and workplaces – stone and bricks would be far too expensive... Making both baskets and house walls need a specific skill.
There were water mills along the Ravensbourne River by the 11th century; they are mentioned in the Domesday Book. Before I finish this series I will do a special article on them. The earliest mill we know about on the Creek is the Olde Floode Mill – and there are suggestions it is Norman Conquest. A miller needs a whole set of skills which are not necessarily just those needed to work the mill and grind up the corn, or whatever. Perhaps their most important skill is the management of the water supply. A water mill needs to be planned which might include altering watercourses and directing the water to where it could be best used to run the wheel mill wheels. This would’ve needed specialist millwrights to come in and advise.
Deptford and Greenwich are said to have been a ‘port’ from the earliest times – and that implies a whole range of skills. Vessels of all sorts came up the Thames to anchor off shore along Deptford Strand – as well as in the mouth of the Creek. We don’t know what sort of ships they were and what sort of cargoes they bought – although a need for ballast for a return journey implies something substantial must have been delivered. As far as I know –and I am trying to get the right books to tell me - Deptford and Greenwich were subject to the port regulations set up in the City of London. Down river in Gravesend rather than a ’Mayor’ they had a ‘Port Reeve’ but that doesn’t seem to have applied to Deptford and Greenwich, although, like Gravesend, they were in Kent.
I also think that the need for a port area also means there is a need for - sorry - bureaucracy – and that somewhere an army of clerks was kept busy. The actual administration of running all these workplaces often seems to be forgotten but once industries began to expand there was every need or proper regulation and management.
Another industry in Deptford and Greenwich is fishing. What does ‘fishing’ mean? It’s easy to think of the prehistoric fisherman paddling about in a home-made coracle and catching enough fish for his family supper. But how far was that ever the case?? We need to know who owned the fishing boats - was there perhaps an owner who employed local people? Were the fishermen full time? Whatever – ‘fishing’ implies a set of skills for which some training was needed. It also means that there was a boat building industry and people who made things like nets and sails. ‘Fishing’ may sound small-scale but it involved many people earning a living with manufacturing skills.
I began this article quoting a vast numbers of bricks made, either locally, or on site. Wherever they were actually made they needed raw materials - ‘brick earth’ needed to be located, dug and taken to the brick makers. The process involves a series of temporary structures which are demolished as each batch is finished – and that needs space. Bricks were all handmade then– and that’s another skilled trade which needed to be learnt. And there would have to be clerks to write up the estimates and eventually present Henry VIII with an invoice
So – this is Deptford before the dockyards and the palace came to the area. A wharfage area, with fishermen and incoming cargoes – and with nearby gravel extraction for ballast. Up river there were a number of mills amd osier beds. To facilitate all of this the river walls and embankments needed to he maintained.
Crucially, these activities imply a high level of skills in the population before the Tudors.
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